BURNING BRIGHT

Writing after the death of Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol declared that ‘people will be discussing new beauty in Beuys as long as there are people.’ That was forty-four years ago, and Warhol’s faith in his friend remains as affecting as the beauty in Beuys today. In 2020, unexpectedly, I find a future-tensed faith in an artist who made room for new beauty in the imagery of our collective past.

In fifty years, it will be more important than ever to look at, and to make like, Blake. Leaning, or maybe more careering, over the pages of an open book; back curving into an inhumanly long, sinuous neck; the (1785–90) sits. But what are we doing looking at such (seemingly) long-gone work on the eve of the twenty-first century’s third decade? I’m here thinking precisely about age teaching youth. I’m thinking about the future – so far as we can consider one, at the moment – that is embedded in, and made possible only by, the past.